Out Of Bounds
Moving Image
In Out Of Bounds I use an altered copy of the videogame Grand Theft Auto V to explore the forbidden out of bounds areas beneath an ersatz simulacrum of the city of Los Angeles. In the real world, the camera is a physical object, constrained by physical laws and the environment is solid, opaque. In a simulated world, physical laws can be broken and exploited to reveal new ways of seeing. The environment in which I film the work has been created by a team of people intending it to be used or played in one way. I acquire the game, then modify it using resources created by anonymous programmers from across the world, swapping out skies, roads, street signs, cars, pedestrians and foliage for alternative versions. The game is no longer in its original form and it is hard to say who authored it, much like a city in the physical world is designed, built and rebuilt by no one person. Then, from within this altered simulation, I record footage from the vantage point of a disembodied eye floating through the air beneath a false horizon. The camera has no mass, and can pass through objects and surfaces like an all-seeing spectre. I find joy and intrigue in using a piece of software in a way never intended by its creators, breaking physical laws instead of the legal ones the developers named the game after.
